


Chiefs & Heroes

by beepbedeep



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: EXCUSE ME AFTER 10 YEARS WE DESERVE A REAL PROPOSAL, F/M, I WAS WAITING MY FRIENDS, Kinda fix-it?, but he never proposed??? like for real??, i love them, maybe this doesn't make sense but that's cool, not like the dragons leaving, that's still sad and bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 12:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19946494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beepbedeep/pseuds/beepbedeep
Summary: He breathes in her presence and she laughs, lightly and he thinks of all the other times they’ve ridden together, chased by monsters and through thunderstorms and at every point in their relationship and he thinks of all their time on the ground together and there is so much of that too. She is there, always, they are together.





	Chiefs & Heroes

For years, for their whole lives actually, a question will follow them. Asked by a hundred different people, spoken from a thousand different mouths, it always comes up in some form or another. “How did you meet?” “When did you fall in love?” “How did you know?” Hiccup understands the questions, he always has – love is hard to find and kinda weird even when you do , so he can’t blame anyone for trying to glean the “secret” from him or Astrid. It’s just that he never has anything particularly enlightening to say. His life, so lucky from the outside, is even more seemingly impossible within. He has NO IDEA how he got here, the steps that took him from an awkward, often-mocked boy to the chief he has become. Or rather, how he ended up married to the greatest person he’s ever met. It’s a combination of dumb luck, a lot of uncomfortable conversations, a fair amount of romantic midnight dragon rides, and a little bit of something he can't quite wrap his head around. 

Two people stand, wrapped in each other’s arms, at the edge of a cliff, looking down at the ocean. It is big, endless, but together there is no reason to be scared. 

He doesn’t remember meeting her, not really. Berk is small and close-knit, everyone knows everyone else. (take anyone walking down the street – you probably dated their sister, went to school with them and know every single embarrassing nickname they’ve ever been attached to, learned how to hunt from their uncle and have been scolded by their mom) She’s always been there, just like Snotlout or Ruffnut or Gobber. 

(most of Hiccup’s nightmares involve a world without Astrid but they are muted and formless because he has no practical idea of what that’s like)

Their families are close, they went to school together, and even if he was usually too scared to talk to her, too timid to cross the tremulous boundary from people-who-know-each-other to friends, she was always there. It’s an innate fact of his life – Astrid is cool (and brave and smart and brilliant and beautiful and _right there_ ) but a vast space existed between them and he had NO IDEA how to jump off the edge and reach her. (turns out _all he needed to do_ was talk to her.) Asked to quantify his feeling at this point, he’d probably go with a crush, the fear and admiration twisting together into something bordering on attraction for the idea of the person who’d spent her life in the same world as him. (the ironic part is, this only served as another wall between them, another barrier he was too scared to break down.)

As a child, she doesn’t like to put her hair up, wailing until her mom unravels the golden strands again. He can’t imagine standing up for himself like that, wanting his opinions to be respected in the same way. Sometimes, in the great hall when Astrid’s mom has decided that this is a time for propriety, he’ll start screaming too and the collective hell they raise is enough to bend anyone within five miles to their will. He _likes_ her.

A little boy, maybe seven or eight, watches a little girl with fascination, like he’s trying to unravel all her mysteries. She looks up, wide eyes meeting his. He looks away.

The barriers were broken down, eventually. (he has Toothless to thank for this.) Training with her to be the next generation of dragon hunters was the best excuse they’d ever had to talk, the longest exposure to the each other. Training SUCKED, for so many reasons, but he’ll never be able to look back on it without remembering how Astrid had been there, how she’d talked to him and laughed at his jokes and pushed him to be better. He soaks up every conversation, every shared look, and thinks about their inside jokes, her blue eyes, the way she holds her axe, her smile when she teases him, more than is probably healthy. They are fifteen, training to be heroes (or villains, his mind whispers. Dragons aren’t the enemy) and all he can think about is this girl, her laugh – loud and free. He like-likes her but he can also hold up his end of a fairly interesting conversation and that feels like progress.

A girl stands at the edge of an arena, skillfully braiding her hair because it’s time for training and nothing’s going to get in her way. A boy pours over books, learning everything he can about the world because even if he’s scared of living it, he can at least understand how it works. They both stay up too late, focused on things that matter, and if they take comfort in their window not being the only one lit by a late-night fire, no one has to know.

Once, they do an team bonding exercise at Gobber’s demand. (they did all mesh eventually, but cohesion takes a while) It involves leaning against your partner, back to back, and shifting weight between your two bodies - the definition of a HORRIBLE idea. Hiccup had been paired with Snotlout who kept knocking Hiccup to the ground and throwing his full weight at the smaller boy. Astrid wasn’t having a better go of it either, Fishlegs’s terrified laughter filled the training arena, and he flinched every time Astrid made contact. Eventually Gobber lost all patience and switched their partners. Astrid had walked right over to Hiccup, smiled, and pressed her back against his. He’d breathed deep, smelling animal fur and something floral. (a smell he now knows as distinctly “Astrid”) She’d looked over at him, questioningly, and he’d nodded before she released her full weight onto him. They went back and forth, sharing the responsibility, and the rest of training had passed in a heartbeat.

(looking back, this has served as an unwitting model for their lives, each taking the weight in turn, always working together)

After they’re done for the day he and Astrid are charged with cleaning the arena. It’s not a fun task, but they get it done quickly and end up seated next to each other, leaning up against the wall, avoiding the world for a few minutes, talking about random things. He makes her laugh, she tells him that she believes in him and he wants to tell her EVERYTHING about Toothless, about the new things he’s learning, but he holds his tongue. (soon he will tell her, but for now, they’re just a girl who will be the greatest warrior Berk has ever known but isn’t yet, and a boy who will be a beloved chief but no one’s told him that secret.)

This is when things shift again. Past liking or anything of the sort, watching this girl collapse on a freshly-swept floor in an explosion of laughter, Hiccup dips his toe into what love might feel like. It’s different than infatuation, different than anything he’s ever felt for her. Before, those feeling were built around their few interactions, who he imagined Astrid might be. Now he knows her and that understanding grows every day. Hiccup much prefers actually talking to her, watching her face light up, learning fully about who she is, even if the conversations are a little awkward on occasion. He prefers actually being in the room with her, even if the odd axe might fly close to his head, because he feels so much more himself around her. 

Astrid, the actual person, is so much better than anyone he could possibly imagine her to be and he doesn’t want to keep his distance. She looks at him and he smiles back, holding her gaze in his own. He knows her now, there’s no possible way to keep him from adoring this person. (They say it’s only possible to love someone once you know who you are, so he figures himself out within the month. Then it’s just them. Together.)

 _He loves her_. For the next few years, as they tame dragons, train with their friends (slowly becoming a formidable force), fight for what they believe in, grow into themselves and stay up late into the night talking about everything and nothing and journey across new lands and learn how to be who they’ve dreamed of he loves her and loves her and _loves her_. They fight together, him with fancy new inventions and her with pure skill and talent (and sharp metal) and endure their friends together and survive together and _all he can think is how much he loves her_ , how lucky he is. (She thinks the same about him, a boy who has become the best kind of man and her, a warrior who knows when to put down her weapons, they must make a good team.) They are partners, different sides of the same coin, and no one can imagine them any differently. She braids his hair now too, it’s a kind of blessing.

She finds him with Toothless on a cliff one afternoon as he thinks about the future, the new lands to explore. He swings his arms around her waist, she laughs, asking questions about the new worlds and he explains because she cares just as much as he does. They make plans and maps and he kisses her. (many, many times) She leans back, looking at the clouds, stroking Toothless with one hand and Stormfly with the other and it hits him, all in a rush, that beyond like, even further than love, he _never_ wants to be without her.

Years pass, together like this - them growing closer, learning how to express affection so huge that it feels like you might shatter, years of falling asleep curled up together and long conversations about the best battle strategies and longer conversations about all the wonderful things in their lives, and looking at each other’s faces in firelight and awkward conversations with parents and a million other things, until one day Gobber starts bugging them about marriage. 

At first it’s not too big of an issue, they assume he’ll let up eventually, but he keeps going and going, _sure_ that his badgering is going to secure their happily ever after. For a while, Hiccup ignores him, he and Astrid have so much _time together_ , so much time to do all the things they have yet to do. They aren’t ready, they don’t need to rush things yet, but then the light fury appears and Hiccup’s whole world _breaks apart_. Toothless does the unimaginable. Toothless leaves. And all that time Astrid is by his side, fighting her own battles and leaning on him for support, then supporting him. They emerge, shattered but still standing, with a whole village to rule on their own and still Hiccup feels they have time, knows that they do, and they are both still grieving for their best friends.

One night Hiccup is up so late it’s not worth sleeping anymore, frantically writing down anything and everything about the dragons, preserving them with ink and paper. (Trying to conjure Toothless back. (He’s happy. Really. He’s happy for Toothless, he only ever wanted what was best for his best friend, but _how can this be best_.) (He knows it is. That doesn’t make it any easier.) Astrid comes up to him, eyes bleary in the kind of way that tells him she hasn’t slept either, wrapped in a blanket that is, to an outside eye, old and gross, but that she loves because it still smells a little like Stormfly and sits next to him, wordlessly presses her head against his shoulder, his hand sliding around her waist and breathes with him. They’ve been crying a lot lately, it’s a practiced thing, and he buries his head in her hair, her eyelashes against his neck and feels her shake with silent sobs. Valka says that knowing you’ll survive in the end doesn’t make getting their any easier and as they cling to each other, on the floor of his father’s old house, he whispers those words and many others into her ear and eventually they do fall asleep, curled up in each other.

Everything is a blur right now – there’s being a chief, being a leader, being _brave_ and _productive_ and _proud_ and then there’s being Toothless’s _ex_ -rider. The in between, _the Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III_ , the person he’s fought so hard to become feels hard to reach. He’s not gone forever, Hiccup knows that, but he’s not _all there right now_ so _what’s the point_. After leading a charge to rebuild one of the houses Grimmel burned down, he realizes that Astrid’s slipped away. He finds her in their old arena, filled with the ghosts of dragons once killed there. (And more recently, the dragons who were _freed_.) She is _beautiful_ , _radiant_ , spinning and kicking, swinging her axe, attacking training dummies with _nothing_ but her _hands_ and _rage_. She’s _always_ powerful, vicious when necessary, but right now her usual control is gone. 

Astrid-with-Stormfly would never fight like this, all _teeth and nails and frenzied pain_ , but Hiccup understands what she’s doing. He understands how she needs to relieve herself of the grief for a few moments, losing herself in the familiar motions and unrestricted expression of battle. She’s truly the _best fighter_ Hiccup has ever known, but as she pauses for a millisecond, clocking his presence before vaulting over her axe and bodily throwing herself at her next target, he sees the rawness, the agony on her face. 

It’s then that he realizes she’s _remembering how to fight with only her own body_ , no dragon waiting to move with her. Learning to carry yourself again is an awful process, but at least they aren’t alone along the way. He joins her, attacking the targets in tandem and for a while they _rage together_. After, they lay on their backs, sand from the floor getting into their hair, looking up at the stars. They talk about their dragons, about their adventures, without railing against the memory or trying to transcribe every detail. (It feels more like breathing than anything else has lately.)

That night, Hiccup sleeps, and dreams of Toothless. He assures Hiccup that, _yes he is happy_ , and, _yes this is awful_ , and for a long while they fly across the dream-lit sky together. Toothless says, _remember I will always be with you_ , and Hiccup replies, _I know, I know, I know_. When they set down together, before Toothless returns to his kingdom he gives Hiccup a look that says, _do remember who we were together, but remember who you are without me too_. Hiccup shakes his head, _I’m not so good at being alone_ , he sighs and Toothless WACKS him with his still-whole tail. _You aren’t alone, you never were_ , and then he licks Hiccup one last time, warm and wet and fishy and smiles his dragon smile, _you can stand on your own now, we both can, but that doesn’t mean we need to_. He jumps, takes flight before Hiccup can ask him, _wait what does that mean_ , so the boy whispers his question to the star-filled sky instead. He turns to go but then-

He is _flying again,_ he is flying into a sunset so beautiful it _stops his breath for a moment_ and Toothless is probably carrying him but he can’t check because _seated in front of him is Astrid_ , the colors in the sky reflecting off her hair. He pulls her closer to him and she turns back to look at him and kisses him and suddenly they're in an older memory from two years ago, almost like their first flight back when he convinced her that dragons mattered and convinced himself that he mattered too. 

He breathes in her presence and she _laughs_ , lightly (the way that Stormfly used to make her laugh, but the way he makes her laugh too) and he thinks of all the other times they’ve ridden together, chased by monsters and through thunderstorms and at every point in their relationship and _he thinks of all their time on the ground together and there is so much of that too_. She is _there_ , always, _they are together_ and he sees flashes of a million different moments they’ve spent together. Many are in the sky but even more are not and Toothless gave them this initial gift of togetherness almost ten years ago, but _they have grown it into something even greater_. He returns to the sunset and the beautiful girl and reaches out to stroke Toothless’s back, to say, _thank you friend, for everything_ , and then he wraps his arms around Astrid and tips off the edge of the dragon’s back (tips off the edge of the world) and they fall together but she is warm in his arms, and _smiling_ and the sky is so beautiful and he sees Toothless flying away, so strong and _they never hit the ground_.

The next morning he wakes up, shivering, and pulls back some of the blankets she stile during the night. She curls into him and opens an eye, smiling an apology. Her hand plays with the hair at the back of his neck pulling him closer to her but he stops, pulls back, placing a hand on her lips. She looks back at him, a question in her eyes. He runs the pads of his fingers across her cheek and smiles.

Marry me.

(that’s when he knew. Or the time before. Or the time before that. It was a lot of steps, a lot of time, but a life without Astrid simply isn’t one he’s interested in living)


End file.
